Love House

Poetry October 2023 ISBN 978-1-961127-03-6 90 pages Softcover, 6" x 9"

If you liked Frank X Walker's first poetry collection, Affrilachia, you will love Love House—a book highlighting family life with its joys and challenges, with special attention to social justice placed in historical context.

"In Love House, Frank X Walker not only brings the collective past back to us in living color, but these poems delve into the sacred personal, the psychohistory of what it means to be father, son, husband, brother, Black. Up close and personal, he writes poems that are on a pendulum, bringing us through the intersection of what is deeply personal in the intimate glances of the depths of our insides; what we find in birdsong and the garden, the devastation of a flood and erosion, then back to the passing of his closest loved ones, what it means to age, violence and the abuse of power, what it means to be human."—Crystal Wilkinson

family love nature

From the Book

Hunger Pains

I remember Miracle Whip sandwiches,
the sound a spoon makes
at the bottom of an empty bowl,
plucking out the swirling dead roach
after stirring the last of the sugar
into the Kool-Aid.

I recall the meatiness of the heels,
the end of a loaf of bread,
how far tap water and a good shaking
could stretch a gallon of milk,
and the welcome texture peelings
added to fried potatoes and onions.

Except for Sundays, meat came
out of a can.
More mouths than meals meant
wasting nothing, even the mysterious
parts wrapped in thin white paper
and stuffed inside discounted chicken
at the supermarket.

Choosing between the gizzard and liver or nothing was always a tough choice.

We learned to enjoy the ghost meat
on a chicken neck, and snapping open
bones to suck out the marrow.
Escaping poverty is hard work and luck.
But you never forget how no money tastes.

What Others Say

In love psalms, tough testimony, in honest self-assessment and generous voice making the voiceless magnificent, this book gets real work done. How many little battles and enigmas of daily life deserve the poem they never got? This book provides. In a mix of lyric celebration and pragmatic interrogation, Walker's poems make big subjects concise and intimate matters magnified so we can see the full range sharp and clear. Sometimes "judgey with people" but ready to be surprised, Walker's is a voice we need to navigate the complexities of family, parenting, love, and the injustices large and small still resident in our world and in our words. This book sets things straight.

— Kim Stafford , author of As the Sky Begins to Change

In his new book of poems, Love House, Frank X Walker invites his readers in and speaks to them with consummate grace and intimacy about the things that matter most: loving, parenting, aging, living, dying, as well as basketball, birds, gardens, and golf. Walker, who is well known for giving voice to historical characters and bringing their stories to life, uses his insight, imagination, and hard-earned wisdom to write about himself and his family, including secrets, fears, and the unsolved mysteries that underlie daily living. Love House is "made of air, poems, books, and art" and real loving people brought to the page by one of today's finest and most prolific poets.

— Greg Pape , author of A Field of First Things

Frank X Walker is known for his poignant historical persona poems, but in Love House, he not only brings the collective past back to us in living color, but these poems delve into the sacred personal, the psychohistory of what it means to be father, son, husband, brother, Black. Up close and personal, he writes poems that are on a pendulum, bringing us through the intersection of what is deeply personal in the intimate glances of the depths of our insides; what we find in birdsong and the garden, the devastation of a flood and erosion, then back to the passing of his closest loved ones, what it means to age, violence and the abuse of power, what it means to be human.

— Crystal Wilkinson , author of Perfect Black

About the Author

Frank X Walker

Multidisciplinary artist and educator, Frank X Walker, is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. He is the author of the children's book, A is for Affrilachia, and eleven collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term "Affrilachia" and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. He serves as Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.